Winning a State Championship is an arduous task that requires discipline, focus, determination and strong team chemistry. For most schools, it is an extremely rare feat to win one title and it could take decades to win another. But for Paly athletics, expectations can always be exceeded.
After a remarkable 2011-2012 season that ended in an underdog victory over Long Beach Poly and a celebratory parade through downtown Palo Alto, many may have wondered what this year’s volleyball team would do for an encore.
At the start of the 2011-2012 season, Coach Dave Winn and his squad established their goal. While they hoped to repeat as State Champions, the players would take the season one game at a time.
“We started to just focus on the present,” Winn said. “We spent a lot of time preparing for the next opponent and played every match like that was the most important match.”
In order to help the girls gain experience playing against strong competition, Winn entered the team into challenging tournaments throughout the season.
“This year we made sure we got into some tough tournaments with the knowledge that we could take a couple losses along the way,” Winn said.
Co-captain Melanie Wade (‘12) believes that the girls’ experience against strong opponents was a key component in the success that the team had this season.
“We were a lot more confident coming into this year [compared to] last year because we’d been in the situation before and everyone had experience in a State game,” Wade said.
This experience, along with the girls’ perseverance throughout the season, contributed to team’s ability to make it back to the State Championship for the second time in two years. There, the Vikes played a talented Marymount High School squad that was eager to knock off the defending champs. However, the Vikings’ unflappable resilience proved to be too much as they overcame a seven point deficit in the fifth set became the first team in Paly history to win back-to-back State Titles.
While winning the championship was a historic feat, the road back to the top came with an additional challenge: high expectations.
“[Winning States] a second time is so much more difficult because there are so many more expectations to fill,” setter Kimmy Whitson (‘12) said.
But, in the face of enormous pressure, the girls did not lose sight of their goal and shoved other people’s expectations aside.
“We trusted each other when we were down,” Whitson said. “We didn’t doubt that we could do it – we believed in each other.”
Following the win, the girls experienced the rewarding feeling that comes when hard work pays off. For many of the players, this game was the high point of their athletic careers.
“This is something that I will remember for my whole life,” libero Shelby Knowles (‘13) said.
While some winning teams rely solely on physical ability to bring them success, it was the Lady Vikes’ confidence in each other that carried them through the past two seasons.
“[Our key] was our team’s belief that we could win and each player’s mental toughness,” Knowles said. “On top of physical ability, we had the most heart.”
With eight seniors graduating this year, the team will look to returning starters Knowles and Becca Raffel (‘14) to lead the team. While the chances of a three-peat are slim, with the same work ethic and team spirit the team is sure to have another strong season.
